The Mathematics of Poker

[sobefuddled]

As of yesterday it had not shown up in my Massachusetts location at either Borders or Barnes & Noble.

[wins_pot]

I finished going through it today.

Of great philosophy books, it's often said that, "the smarter you get, the smarter it gets." In economics, I get that feel reading someone like Thomas Schelling. With each reading, you gain a richer understanding of his genius. The Mathematics of Poker is clearly a work of genius. It's the best poker book ever published. It doesn't merely build on Sklansky and the like --- we've leaped forward a few years with this work.

Congrats to Jerrod and Bill for this outstanding book.

I have a math and econ background (i've taken twelve phd-level econ courses, including two in game theory) and I missed a lot of key stuff on the first reading. I plan to spend a lot of time with this book.

Brandon

[gmcarroll33]

To either of the authors, I have a question about the concept of jamming the pot on pg 86-88.

On Pg 88 you state that if your opponent raises 25% of his hands from the button but only calls a few reraise jams then this is a good play when he is calling you less than 1/5 of the time.

I'm kind of confused about the idea you guys mentioned about jamming him from the blinds just because he will usually fold. Correct me if I'm wrong but the idea I got is that a player like this is only going to be calling these jam moves with AA KK or AK.

What my question is, are there any specific range of hands you recommend needed to jam the guy with in this situation, or are you actually recommending jamming with 2-3?

Also, I haven't read ahead yet, so you may have answered this, but what about considerations of people who remain in early position left to call your jam move? Do you not worry about them limping in with monster hands in this situation?

By the way excellent book so far. I can see why Chris Ferguson says this will be the only book on his syllabus if he ever teaches math at UCLA. I've taken Probability and Statistics, and Psychological Stats(involved confidence intervals, and central limit theorem.) This book is in-depth, but tough so far for me. Math is not my strong point, even though I made A's in each class. Just tough to remember how to do a lot of it, without an actual hands on teacher. Either way, nothing I can't handle overall so far. Great book.

[boondoggle]

How come 2+2 did not publish this book?

cheers
Boon

[Jerrod Ankenman]

[ QUOTE ]
To either of the authors, I have a question about the concept of jamming the pot on pg 86-88.

On Pg 88 you state that if your opponent raises 25% of his hands from the button but only calls a few reraise jams then this is a good play when he is calling you less than 1/5 of the time.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a good exploitive play in this circumstance, if you know the guy's strategy and the stacks are as we describe.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm kind of confused about the idea you guys mentioned about jamming him from the blinds just because he will usually fold. Correct me if I'm wrong but the idea I got is that a player like this is only going to be calling these jam moves with AA KK or AK.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, you're definitely unhappy if he calls. But all the money you picked up by raising all the times he doesn't more than makes up for it.

[ QUOTE ]
What my question is, are there any specific range of hands you recommend needed to jam the guy with in this situation, or are you actually recommending jamming with 2-3?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, "this situation" is specific to the stack size and the player -- the idea is that you can calculate the equity of your different actions and figure out which is best from an exploitive standpoint. Here, it's fairly obvious that "jam" is the best option for almost every hand because the opponent's strategy is so weak - that is, he raises loosely but gives up frequently.

[ QUOTE ]
Also, I haven't read ahead yet, so you may have answered this, but what about considerations of people who remain in early position left to call your jam move? Do you not worry about them limping in with monster hands in this situation?

[/ QUOTE ]

There are no limpers in this example, and yes it would be imperative to be aware of them and their likely distributions and strategies if there were any.

[ QUOTE ]
By the way excellent book so far. I can see why Chris Ferguson says this will be the only book on his syllabus if he ever teaches math at UCLA. I've taken Probability and Statistics, and Psychological Stats(involved confidence intervals, and central limit theorem.) This book is in-depth, but tough so far for me. Math is not my strong point, even though I made A's in each class. Just tough to remember how to do a lot of it, without an actual hands on teacher. Either way, nothing I can't handle overall so far. Great book.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks.

jerrod

[Guy McSucker]

I'm enjoying the book and I think it's pretty well-written considering the material (mathematics) and the intended audience (poker players).

There are lots of little typos, as there will often be in a book like this. However, the thing that has been bugging me most is the typography. Typesetting mathematics is different from typesetting ordinary text, and there are lots of mistakes in the book.

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah since there are 382 pages not counting the roman numbered ones, I opened to 191. I see what you mean.


[/ QUOTE ]

So let's take a look at p191 to illustrate...

line 1: "where x is odd" should say "where n is odd"

line 2: there's a missing + before the first occurrence of "[...]"

line 3: "when X is even" should say "when n is even"

The next few lines look okay.

The missing + rears its head again twice in the displayed formula at line 12.

The last paragraph (beginning "This is Y's entire strategy") contains lots of occurrences of something that comes up throughout the book, which is the random changing typeface of mathematical variables. E.g. on the second line, in "(n + 1)th", n has an italic typeface, but later in "nth" it is Roman. Similarly, the variable r appears in Roman on lines two and three of the paragraph but in italic on line four.

Just below the displayed equation, we find Roman "yn" and "xn" which should be y_n (y subscript n) and x_n, in italic; these are pretty bad typesetting errors.

Speaking of subscripts, what's going on there? Look at the top of p190, where it says "At x_1", and compare with the top of p192, "at y_1": there's a huge difference in size between the two subscript-1s. Why?

Also in the second table on p190, the intervals [y3,y2] and so on are typeset with the ys in subscript font, so that the 3s and 2s appear right next to the ys, whereas in the first and third tables the ys are in normal style and the subscripts are obviously subscripts. This subscripting starts to look really bad on p192 where intervals like [x_n, y_n] appear, because the comma in the middle attaches itself to the subscript n in a weird way and makes it look like a subscript n' (n prime), if you see what I mean.

Anyway, you may think a lot of this is nitpicking, and while you would not be entirely wrong, I firmly believe that if you want to make the book as easy to read as possible, and as correct as possible, then getting the typography right and avoiding these kinds of errors is important: with hard-to-read subscripts etc, the reader is forced to guess what you mean, and while there may only be one reasonable guess most of the time, there is always a chance the reader gets it wrong.

The stuff I pointed out above came from opening the book at a randomly chosen page (chosen by Bill!) but I was confident I'd find plenty of this kind of stuff because it's everywhere in the book.

(I've got it open on p192 now and can see several more such bugs.)

Another related thing is the typesetting of fractions. For instance on p82 near the bottom there's a term

-1/3(100+3x)

and on p128, equation 12.5 we have

9/2(S+3)

In the first of these, the term in parentheses is intended to be understood as being in the numerator of the fraction, and in the second it's supposed to be in the denominator. That's a pretty major ambiguity since they look identical in terms of typography.

So, a plea. If you ever get round to creating a second edition, which I sincerely hope you will since it's a great text, please please please get the typesetting done by someone who knows how to typeset mathematics, using a system which is capable of doing a good job. I'm sure it will add a lot of quality to the final product.

Yours geekily,

Guy.

[thylacine]

Question to Authors

Why not typeset mathematics using LaTeX? It's use is virtually universal in mathematics.

[poincaraux]

[ QUOTE ]
Question to Authors

Why not typeset mathematics using LaTeX? It's use is virtually universal in mathematics.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was wondering that too. Chen has a math Ph.D., so he has to be pretty familiar with TeX. My guess is that non-math/physics publishers just don't do TeX (I certainly can't convince biophysics journals to accept things in TeX, for instance).

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Question to Authors

Why not typeset mathematics using LaTeX? It's use is virtually universal in mathematics.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was wondering that too. Chen has a math Ph.D., so he has to be pretty familiar with TeX. My guess is that non-math/physics publishers just don't do TeX (I certainly can't convince biophysics journals to accept things in TeX, for instance).

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? Wow! What do they accept? What do they insist on?

[poincaraux]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Question to Authors

Why not typeset mathematics using LaTeX? It's use is virtually universal in mathematics.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was wondering that too. Chen has a math Ph.D., so he has to be pretty familiar with TeX. My guess is that non-math/physics publishers just don't do TeX (I certainly can't convince biophysics journals to accept things in TeX, for instance).

[/ QUOTE ]

Really? Wow! What do they accept? What do they insist on?

[/ QUOTE ]

Take your worst guess.

Microsoft Word or PDF is the standard at most places, but some other formats are supported. I just checked the Journal of Computational Chemistry .. they want you to submit Word files, RTF files or straight postscript. Their suggestion for LaTex is that you convert it to .ps or .pdf before submitting it. Other places are a little more strict. Biophysical Journal requires things to be in PDF (no other options).

Someday, the rest of the publishing world will see the light, but my guess is still that their publisher didn't want to deal with TeX.